Diary

• It's all for one and one for all on the London Underground as Bob Crow and the RMT union gear up for potentially crippling strikes next week. Ken Livingstone is to blame, says mayor Boris Johnson. No, Boris is to blame, says Ken. In four years as mayor, the Tory has yet to meet the union for as much as a coffee and a garibaldi. Boris has indeed kept the RMT at arm's length, but his luck may run out if, as polls predict, he wins next month's mayoral election. Among fringe parties seeking the platform within City Hall is the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition (Tusc), a leftwing grouping shaped by the Socialist party (né Militant). It needs just 5% of the poll to join the London Assembly, and noting the success of Gorgeous George Galloway, they suspect a grouchy electorate might provide it. Tusc's talisman was expected to be Nick Wrack, the PR-savvy barrister, past chair of Galloway's Respect party and a member of Michael Mansfield QC's radical chambers. But the money and the muscle for much of Tusc's high-profile campaigning is coming from the union. So after votes and jockeying in a smoke-filled room, down slipped Wrack, from No 1 on the party's putative candidate list to No 2, and up went Alex Gordon, Bob Crow's confidant and the RMT's president. Come 4 May, it is he who expects to shake his fist at Boris in person. As for the people's choice Nick Wrack – oh well.

• We value the cussedness of such as Kate Hoey, but, it must be said, she has her blind spots. For a start, Kate is no fan of news on the web. Come be part of our online question and answer session on the Olympic legacy, we invited her. "What section of the Guardian do you work on?" she demanded of my colleague Paul Owen. "The website," he said proudly. "I don't care about websites," barked Kate. "I don't read the website, I'm not interested in the website, I don't want to give any comment to the website." A lot of people do read the website, said Paul. Millions. "To me it's not a real paper. I know I sound like a dinosaur, but I don't care," said Kate. Yes, an original. Catch up with her at katehoey.com.

• But we need characters. Such as Jerry Hayes, former Tory MP, barrister, teller of tales, drinker of drinks. On Tuesday Hayes, blogging on the website Dale and Co, reminisced about his former publisher Mohamed Al Fayed. Fayed owned Punch magazine. Hayes wrote a column. Fayed was ready to help everyone with everything. One day, claimed Hayes, "he breezed into the office and approached a secretary who was desperate for a child. 'My dear, I understand that you have a problem in the baby-making department and perhaps I can help,' he said with a smile and a sharp intake of breath from the rest of us as we didn't quite know what was on offer." The details as described by Hayes are too icky to relate here, but Hayes says Fayed had made provision for the creation of a future generation, keeping the facilitating material in the fridge. "So, if you wish to borrow, be my guest," Fayed said, according to Hayes. All denied by Fayed, of which more tomorrow. Behold, a clash of titans.

• Big characters. They have the answers. Maybe Harry Redknapp will have the answers England need to become a football power again. Still he doesn't know everything. Derek McGovern, who helped write Harry's autobiography, tells the football magazine FourFourTwo of an interview with Redknapp as the manager indulged his other passion, horse-racing at Sandown. "Halfway through, his mobile phone went," says McGovern. "It was his wife Sandra, worried sick, telling him that his infant grandchild had swallowed Flash detergent – and asking him what she should do. He said: 'Have you tried mopping the floor with him?'"

• Finally, high excitement, just a 100 days to go until the Olympics. Lord Coe will plant a commemorative tree. For generations to come people will seek its shade, knowing that it was planted 100 days before the Olympics. And in the US, there is the Embassy Games, involving diplomats from former host countries such as Bosnia, Canada, Germany, the US and Greece. The winners get medals. The Greeks perhaps, the cash equivalent. Every little helps.